Monday, November 1, 2010

It's time to retire some Halloween costumes

Now that we’ve eaten all the candy corn, washed the fake blood from our faces and stowed away the wigs and fairy wings, now is time to ruminate on Halloween 2010.

It might be just me, as my only exposure to Halloween was Saturday night on Frenchmen Street and at Voodoo Fest, but were the costumes this year underwhelming? Of course there were those Halloween engineers whose talents in dead-person makeup and papier mache made them bastions of dignity in this increasingly tawdry holiday. But elsewhere, the aggressive mediocrity displayed by many seemed to outshine those people whose costumes took slightly more effort than a hasty trip to Party City. Of course, each year there are ubiquitous costumes based off the pop stars (Katy Perry), headlines (Chilean miners) and right-wing loonies (Christine O’Donnell) of the moment. (Gawker does an excellent job of predicting these costumes.) It’s one thing to be something zeitgeist-y, because at least it’s relevant, albeit tired and unoriginal. But several costumes I saw reached their expiration dates long ago. Many also committed the crimes of poor execution and confusing a bra and underwear for an adequate costume. So, in light of this, I think it’s time to officially ban some costumes from all subsequent Halloweens:

Why are you still dressing as these people?: Health Ledger Joker from The Dark KnightWaldo (there were SO many of these this year. What’s going on?)Lady Gaga

Other notable, but less frequent, failures: Half-assed Marty McFly and Snooki (a disheveled black wig and a short black thing with absolutely no fake tanner? Nope)The cute-girl version of Alvin and the Chipmunks: skinny jeans worn with shirts saying the chimpmunks’ names with no masks or makeup “Mad Men character:” just wearing an ill-fitting suit or vintage-style dress while smoking the whole night, with no wig or any other indicator “Sexy” crayons (in “hot” pink! Get it?)

So start shopping, everyone! You have 364 days to come up with something.

(Also, if you have any other costumes you'd like to see banned, put 'em in the comments.)